Ghost Whisperer: Taken
by Thor2000
Summary: Loosely based on the story of Waverly Hills Hospital, Ned tells Melinda he thinks a classmate is possessed after visiting an old hospital, but Melinda doesn't think so until she meets the young lady.
1. Chapter 1

The sun was straight up over the town square in Grandview. The sky was clear and blue as an Easter egg in spring with scant clouds over the distance warning their approach. The air was cold, chill to the touch with the taste of winter and the stinging embrace of an Arctic wind. Pedestrians walked through the crunching and crackling leaves skittering at roadside. Young children dashed through bundled up in heavy coats and adults pulled up their collars to up over their heads. Despite the bright clear sky, there was no sign of the heat that the human population of town wanted. It was another New England winter where the memories of summer were still in the dreams of the city inhabitants and the presence of winter was casting its shadow upon the town. Melinda Gordon bundled up in her favorite cashmere coat trying to keep warm and looking up beaming to Mr. Betters the grocer trying to see off the last of his Halloween pumpkins. He jovially acknowledged her existence with his big beaming grin and placed the sign out to sell the last of his pumpkins quickly before they rotted away. The hardware store was taking down its Halloween decorations and replacing them for Thanksgiving turkeys and cartoon-like pilgrims and non-realistic Native Americans. Melinda smirked a little realizing they'd only be up a week before the Christmas decorations went up before everyone else's. Stepping around the store's merchandise on the sidewalk, she motioned a bit more briskly to her antique store with a slight jaunt, her long auburn locks dancing on her shoulders and her youthful and determined brown eyes peering through her front glass doors to her new best friend.

"A bit cold out there, ain't it?" Delia turned her look up to Melinda.

"Cold is not the word I'd use." She unwound her scarf from her fine features and reached down doing her partial striptease to her clothes. "I'd call it overwhelmingly bitter." She showed her distaste for the cold weather with a face and unfurled her shoulders from her coat, letting it slide down her arms before hanging it on the coat rack in the entrance to her storeroom. Garbed more comfortingly in a dark violet sweater and stylish French blue jeans ordered from a catalog, she rubbed her hands together to summon heat back into her bones and moved toward the counter with her boots rapping against the hard wood floor. Along the way, her glance passed through the doorway to her back room. Delia's son, Ned, was sitting in back with his schoolbooks struggling and scribbling with his math book open.

"No school?"

"Teacher in-service…" Delia lightly cleaned around the antiques. "He's also grounded until his next calculus test, and by his grades, it's going to be a while." She paused a second. "Mel, could you…"

"I didn't even take calculus in school." Melinda thought back to her youth. "My school didn't even have a teacher for it. The highest we got was basic algebra." She looked to Delia's struggle for a son with better grades. "But… I can try."

"Oh, would you…"

"How hard could it be?" Melinda asked out loud. She rolled her eyes with a non-committal bearing and turned round coming upon Ned. The young man had grown quite tall before her eyes and was no longer a mere youth but a handsome young man. She peered over his shoulder at his formulas and patterns and already realized she was in over her head.

"Melinda…" His head turned up to her. "Got any new stories for me?" He referred to her psychic ability to see ghosts. Although she did not see herself as a psychic, she had been quite open with her gift to him and most recently his mother. Neither of them seemed as fascinated nor open of the afterlife as Andrea had been, but at least Ned wasn't as afraid of it as his mother.

"Later," Melinda leaned down next to him. "Your mother wants me to tutor you and… uh…" The book was basically in another language. "They are teaching you this?"

"Exactly…" Ned looked to her as an equal than another adult. "Why do I have to learn this? I'm never going to use it in real life."

"Well," Melinda pulled her hair into a ponytail and secured it. "Figuring it out will help you to figure out other problems. Now let's see here…" She started reading the book to try and understand its codes and formulas. The young man next to her reacted a bit distracted and took a deep breath before looking back at her.

"Melinda…." Ned looked up to her hoping his restrained infatuation with her wasn't obvious. "Could I talk about something to you a moment? I don't want my mother to know about this."

"Ned," Melinda's voice dropped to a notable whisper. "I can't keep secrets from your mother."

"I heard the words…" Delia stepped back into the storeroom. "Mother and secret… What's up, Ned?" She stood and posed with her weight on one leg and her strict mother look taking control of her face. She arched her head at an angle expecting to know the truth. Melinda gasped embarrassingly. Ned stepped back deflated and vulnerable.

"It's about Nick Watterson's Halloween party last week…."

"Let me guess, " Delia looked at him disapprovingly upset. "There really weren't any parents there. You lied…"

"I didn't lie. I was…" Ned looked to Melinda for support and leaned backward as he sat on a table. "Misinformed… After Jesse picked me up, we didn't go to Nick's house. He drove us out to Weatherly Hills in the next county to some old sanitarium out in the woods. They planned it like this so no one would spill the news the party wasn't going to be chaperoned…."

"Was there beer there?" Delia liked this story less and less.

"Yes, but I didn't drink any, I swear." Ned continued. "I drank Pepsi all night so I could be the designated driver on purpose. It just seemed…" He rolled his eyes suffering from teen angst. "The best way to party without getting drunk and in trouble."

"Ned…" Melinda confronted him with her knowledge of the place. Local lore claimed the old tuberculosis hospital was haunted; it was only after such stories had started that local youths had started erroneously referring to it as a an alleged mental sanitarium. The location had been the site of a few low-budget movies because of its atmosphere and most camera crew and actors swore that the derelict structure was filled with ghosts. "Did something happen out there?"

"I'm not sure…" Ned stood up straight and nervously paced side to side. "I mean, Zack, Carter, Jesse and the guys had rigged the place with all these scares… you know, fishing line stuff, spring-loaded gags, hidden tape players and all this junk, but through all of it, there was a few things that happened that didn't seem faked. Our music went off, there were doors slamming, footsteps from the upstairs…." He paused and looked to his mother and then to Melinda. "This one girl, Jackie Stiles, vanished from the party."

"Ned…" Delia approached her son appealing to his conscience. "If your little friend vanished, you should go to the police…"

"She's not my friend, she's this vain, stuck-up diva princess who thinks she's better than everyone else." Ned told the truth. "Or she used to be. I mean, she was missing for over three hours, and we covered practically every possible room of the place looking for her in turns, and just when Nick finally decided to call the police, she pops up out of nowhere, in the old commissary sitting in a chair, sipping a soda as if nothing had happened."

"So, what's the problem?" Melinda didn't see it. "She wandered off, got lost and found her way back."

"I don't think so…" Ned looked to her. "The other day in school, she suddenly aced a history test. She's all of a suddenly mature and friendly and nice. I mean, she actually said hello to be and she's never been said more than one word to me much less acknowledged my existence once in her life. Even her best friend, Laurie Gold, says she like a suddenly new person." He took a deep breath realizing what he was about to say. "Melinda, I think she's possessed."

"What, like, Linda Blair possessed?" Delia didn't particularly like this stuff.

"Ned…" Melinda hadn't dealt with anything similar to this in her years of seeing ghosts. "There's no such thing. Ghosts can't possess the living."

"I was afraid you'd say something like that." Ned started motioning to wander out embarrassingly.

"Ned, wait…" Melinda rolled her eyes and turned back toward the young man. A brief glance to Delia, she made a short non-committal groan. "If you want me to meet her and give my opinion, I will, but chances are… she's just changed after a frightening experience. Getting lost in that old place would freak anyone out."

"Yeah… whatever…" Ned pulled his backpack up to over his shoulder and turned to the entrance. The bell on the door rang and he was soon off commiserating in his personal teen angst once more. Melinda and Delia shared a look between them and both shared a moment of tired frustration dealing with the young man.

"Wait a second…" Delia suddenly remembered something. "You're supposed to be grounded young man."


	2. Chapter 2

Life at Grandview High School went on with the same routines and the same rituals. The names and faces changed, but the routines and rituals stayed the same. The high school jock stood boasting the glories of his football achievements, thinking that they would make him set for life. The high school geeks who obsessed about the things they cared about found other such enthusiasts to share their thoughts and discoveries, or found no one to share their insights and regressed into the shadows, wondering what was wrong with the world around them. The junior princesses elevated by their classmates relished their brief high school aristocracy - little knowing their status would only last within the walls of this disgusting building they mocked from afar. The high school bully who thought he was the high school clown took it himself to point out the foibles, errors and otherwise less-than perfect traits that set the normal students apart. He had no patience for school and had forced himself to believe he did not need it, much like the school rejects, the teen criminals and problem kids who were under the mistaken conception that since they came from poverty-stricken families that they did not have to follow the rules. Their only mission was to wonder why they had detention or suspension so often and how to keep themselves out of jail for the rest of their pathetic spurious lives.

Junior Goodlett the class clown lashed out for attention as the class comedian by putting shaving cream on the locker of Mike Goodwin, one of the school bullies but also one of the school jocks, who had the back of his fellow football buddies to put the other school weaklings in their place. Mickey Walker and Devon Shapiro left Miss Prudent's room after making up a missed test, and Principal Karlen exorcised Nancy Hardwick from the office for her crime of smoking in the girl's bathroom. Reminded that smoking was not allowed on the school grounds, she rolled her eyes and turned her Goth-dressed body to the gymnasium to sit with her friends. Laurie Gold, Tricia Bobbitt and Sheera Castellari meanwhile broke the wave in this sea of adolescence and underachievers. Their wardrobe was in vogue, their looks were costly and their hearts as empty as the cemetery beyond the football field. They would have fit in perfectly in the "me-generation" of the Eighties, but they could not live without their cell phones in order to viciously spread along the rumors, lies and innuendoes they heard about their classmates, whether they were true or not. By time the eleventh person heard the lie, it was usually accepted as the truth. Unfortunately, when their female mafia lost a member, the fear was that she was off telling the secrets of the other three. Ignoring the geeks and the underclassmen, snubbing the jocks and looking at their favorite bad boys, they emerged from the lobby outside of the school gym and stood on the front portico of the school where the buses dropped off at least eighty percent of the school body, mostly underclassmen and seniors who did not have rich parents to buy them cars. Tricia noticed their missing coven member and pointed her out to Laurie. A toss of her red-dyed hair, the once decent Jewish girl converted into adolescent diva and marched up with purpose to her absent and soon to be former best friend, the one who had covered for her smoking and who had had helped her get Will Donner as her former future mate for life, a relationship that had lasted just but all of three weeks.

"Jackie," Laurie stood over her best friend. "You haven't gone shopping with us in a week. Are you snubbing us?"

"No…" Brunette blue-eyed Jackie Stiles turned another page in her novel. "I've just been busy."

"Doing what?" Tricia spoke up. "You're just reading a book."

"Are you for real?" Jackie scoffed at her attitude and shook her head believing none of it with a toss of her long locks.

"Jackie, look…" Laurie and Sheera shared a look between them. "You're not acting normal, and we're worried about you. I mean, you were nice to Nancy the other day and we've been teasing her since the Fifth Grade. You also aced Coach Thaxton's history test. Now, if you've found a new way to cheat, please let us in on it. We need the good grades too!"

"Yeah!"

"I'm not cheating." Jackie looked away unable to believe this interrogation. "I know this stuff."

"Jackie…" Laurie looked at her. "It's history. Much like Math and English, it's unimportant."

"Look, Jackie," Tricia decided to make her point. "If you are thinking of talking about us, we'll spread the most vicious gossip about you that we can think of. Your reputation will be ruined."

"And your point is…."

"Oh my god, she doesn't care." Sheera looked away in shock. "She's like possessed or something."

"Jackie, honey…" Laurie stroked her friend's hand trying to be caring. "You're not normal." She started backing away in nervous apprehension. "Let's get away in case it's catching!" The aesthetic redhead turned and dashed away with her two blonde wannabes. Jackie watched them hastening into the school and chuckled at them a bit for being funny, whether they meant to be that way or not. She checked her watch expecting the school bell and then looked up as the last bus arrived to vomit forth another bellyful of students, pupils and would-be future felons. When it parted, it gave an unobstructed look to Melinda Gordon dropping Ned Banks off for school. The appearance of the stunningly attractive brunette beauty from the antique store was going to do marvels for Ned's cred in this school. Melinda had been to the school a number of times looking into something paranormal within in the walls, but now she was starting to realize she was something of a sex symbol as Ned's buddies and cronies applauded him for being in her presence. Briefly noting the cajoling cheers and sounds of support from his peers, Ned paused, spanned his gaze among the twenty or thirty members of the loitering student body and noticed Jackie once more off to the side reading and engrossed in a book, the second in her hands for her entire life.

"That's her." Ned pointed to the benches flanking the front entrance. Jackie was sitting apart from the others on the left bench.

"Wait, I think I know her…" Melinda paused. "Her mother is Donna Stiles who owns the restaurant near my store. I've seen her several times."

"Yeah," Ned pulled his backpack tighter over his shoulder and pushed his left hand into his left blue jeans pocket. "Well, around here, she's a rhymes-with-witch." He paused thinking about it. "Or used to be…." The first school bell rang and a few students bolted to get through the gates to their lockers. Others lagged behind unafraid to be late for class. With the sound, Jackie acknowledged the time and tried to finish the chapter of her Stephen King novella. While a few students rushed to get into the school, Ned and Melinda braved the rush against them to head toward Jackie's presence.

"Jackie," Ned led the way. "This is a friend of mine. She's kind of into ghost stories and when I told her you got lost in the old hospital, she wanted to meet you."

"Hey, Ted," Jackie shined and beamed brightly as he approached.

"Ned, my name is Ned."

"Sorry…" The young ingénue apologized delicately. "I just horrible with remembering names."

"I'm Melinda Gordon…" Melinda reached and shook the lovely young lady's hand. Jackie was petite with a small frame and perfect baby-doll looks around her large royal blue-eyes, accentuated by long Olympian brown locks. She had the poise of an actress with the graceful meandering of a fairy tale princess. Melinda could only note that she was too composed for a person who Ned suspected was possessed by a spirit. "I own and run the antique store near your mother's restaurant. I think we met when I sold the décor that went into it."

"Oh…"

"Ned told me you had a bit of an experience up at Weatherly Hills. You got lost or something." Melinda tried fishing for details.

"Ned, what have been saying about me?" Jackie had collected her things and was strolling to the school entrance. Ned had musingly drawn silent and listened intently as Melinda walked along Jackie's left side talking to her.

"He's been saying nothing but nice things." Melinda added.

"Well, Mrs. Gordon…" Jackie slung her purse strap over her right shoulder and carried her books in her left hip. "I'm afraid there's not much to tell. I went looking for some bathroom privacy, got briefly locked in a room for a while and then bumped lost through the darkness of the third floor trying to find my way back to my friends." Her blue eyes had briefly turned brown and back to blue. Melinda had noticed it. Ned hadn't.

"A lot of people say the old hospital is haunted." Melinda replied. "Did you see or feel anything?"

"Not really…" Jackie rolled her eyes wondering where this was going. "But I wasn't really that scared, just sympathetic to all the people who had died of tuberculosis there."

"That's weird…" Melinda jostled her head stirringly. "Almost everyone your age thinks it was a insane asylum. How did you know what it really was?"

Jackie looked away to say hello to her friends. When she looked back to Melinda, her face had become ghastly white, almost graven like rotting flesh drained of pallor and her eyes were completely black. It was as if Melinda were looking into the face of a desiccated corpse. Ned hadn't seen it, but it was obvious that it was something that only her second sight could perceive. It was just for a brief few seconds, like that of a clip of film inserted into the tapestry of her life. Melinda made a short gasp of shock and jumped backward from the image. Could Ned have been right?!

"Mrs. Gordon, " Jackie and Ned wondered about her dismay. "Are you okay?" Jackie's face was back to normal. Pink, perfect and with a minor blemish in the form of an imperceptible pimple scar hidden away by flesh-colored medicine on the eave of her chin. She was a very attractive young lady once more.

"I'm sorry…" Melinda wasn't sure just what she had seen. "I just remembered I have to pick something up." Her voice briefly wavered from the startling fear of that face.

"Okay…" Jackie waved to her. "Nice to have met you." She turned on the heel of her old sneakers and turned for her way to her locker with her shoulder length dark locks wafting around from her and bouncing on her green sweater. Ned looked at her animatedly and extroverted passing through the school saying hello and warmly greeting her classmates. He glanced back to Melinda and dodged back to her, hastening down the front steps to the school and catching her on the curb near her vehicle.

"Melinda…" He tugged her by her arm. "What did you see?"

"I don't know!" She confessed afraid and dismayed and scrambled for the seeming safety of her Explorer.


	3. Chapter 3

"Melinda, why do you have to keep going to him for help?" Jim Clancy asked his beautiful brunette wife. "Why can't you bounce a question off me once in a while?" He paused frying dinner. "I mean… I can be insightful. I can give it a shot. I mean…" He looked into her emotive brown eyes. "Living with you, I'm almost an expert…"

"What do you know about possession?" She stopped, posed by the kitchen counter and reared her head up with curious insight.

"You mean like…" Jim pondered and furrowed his action figure features. "Linda Blair?"

"That's why I'm going to see him."

Driving to the university in the next town was starting to become a routine. The pure and plucky psychic had to rely on the paranormal expert known as Professor Rick Payne for those aspects of the supernatural that she did not know or for translations on the things she saw. Melinda knew the basics: that the human spirit upon the cessation of its corporeal life existed in energy form after death. When it stayed behind on earth, it was a ghost. When it was the place memories of a location trapped in repetition replaying itself, it was an apparition. When it was a ghost taking the form in which he had died, it was a specter. These earthbound spirits were meant to pass into a higher plane of existence rather than to stay in this plane by purpose or by accident. For everything else involving events of non-corporeal magnitude, Paine had the answer or an inkling of how to figure it out for her. Unfortunately, to get that answer often involved wading through the eccentric trailing of his personality like chopping through the cluttered vines and eaves of a dense forest just to get to the other side. He was both the comic relief and the Obi-Wan in the TV version of her life, the jesting and comical Merlin to her young adventuress. She was almost a regular at the college, and when she arrived, his colleagues looked upon Melinda's shapely figure and were reminded that beyond the gratingly absurd behavior and theories that Paine actually sometimes had a life.

"I should have got the pastrami." He looked up from lunch at his desk.

"What?" Melinda wondered what he was musing on this time.

"Whenever I get roast beef or turkey on rye you always show up…" Payne made that annoying life observation he was known for in his life. "I should have got the pastrami."

"Cute…" Melinda wished she had another paranormal expert to consult. If only she lived in Collinsport with William Collins or Friendship with James Harvey, she could get the supernatural advice she wanted without all this meandering eccentrically psychological tripe. "Look, I met this young lady who I think is possessed and…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa…" Payne took a bite of his turkey on rye, wiped his lip and looked up with excited interest. "Are you kidding? I mean…did her head do a three-sixty? Is she talking like Harvey Firestone?"

"Who? No…" She watched the annoying and yet insightful professor rise from his desk and hasten to his shelves of books on the paranormal and the supernatural. He glanced over his history tomes and archaeology books looking for the right resource. "Look, she could be possessed, but she's not acting possessed. The girl I encountered was very well-behaved, courteous and quite normal in behavior."

"Marcie Harker!!!" He cried out, rolled round to his shelves and pulled out a book. "I got to get this book back to Collins." He shoved it back and pulled out a copy of _A History of Occurrences and Phenomenon_ by Dr. Gerald Frid. "In 1876, a young girl named Marcie Ann Harker came out of a illness claiming she was actually Abby Lynn Stoddard, another girl who had died from the exact same illness." He opened up the book to the account. "She was so definite in her accusation that she refused to stay with her family and instead went to live with the heart-broken Stoddard family where she lived seven more years claiming to be Abby." He showed the book to Melinda. "However, when the Stoddards suddenly learned they were expecting, Marcie suddenly regresses back to being Marcie without any memories of the previous few years. Many paranormal researchers believe that Abby's ghost returned as Marcie and departed only after her parents had another kid."

"Is such a thing possible?" Melinda asked.

"Many of my colleagues believe it happens a lot more often that we know." Paine beamed excitedly realizing what he knew to be true. "There are numerous accounts of people coming out of accidents, illnesses and brushes with death who suddenly made life altering changes that affected their lives. Have you ever heard of Anna Anderson?"

"Sounds familiar…"

"On February 17, 1920, a young girl named Anna Anderson was pulled from a canal in Berlin where she committed suicide, but get this, " Paine gasped to catch his breath. "While she was recuperating in the hospital, she claimed to be the lost Grand Duchess Anastasia, daughter of the slain Emperor Nicholas of Russia, who had mysteriously vanished some years before. A battery of forensic and scientific tests all prove she is not the Grand Duchess, at the biological and corporeal level, but yet, at the more "spiritual level," she has intimate knowledge and memories of people, places and events that only the Grand Duchess would have… could have known. Everyone agrees, she could not have been her if but for her knowledge of the events she knew and described."

"So…" Melinda looked at the page about Marcie Harker and back to Payne. "Ghosts do sometimes return from the dead by possessing the living? But why?"

"Why?" The eccentric professor spun around theatrically returning to his lunch. "Maybe because they're not ready to pass over or because they want to return to life to do what they were never able to do before. Personally, I wish I could come back as an underwear model."

"Yeah," Melinda wanted to remove that image from her mind. "Cherish that thought, uh, so, how do I get this spirit out of this girl."

"Well," Payne tried one his curly fries. "I love these things, want one?" Melinda passed on the greasy fast food. "Maybe you can do your thing and force this spirit to pass over or you could confront it. Do you know who it is in this girl?" He paused mumbling to himself. "Wouldn't it be interesting if it turned out to be a guy? I've often wondered what it would be like to be a woman for a day."

"No…" Melinda folded her arms before her sweater. "But I know how to find out." She saw herself actually asking her husband for a favor.


	4. Chapter 4

Up north of Grandview were the small fishing communities of Oak Ridge, Pine Valley and Rolling Hills, but beyond that along Highway 413 were the towns of Rushland and Montgomery. Just across the county line, Jim DeLancy recognized the old rural route to Weatherly Hills and the old hospital. He had grown to respect his wife's psychic gifts and he envied her a little about them. Not wanting her to explore the old hospital by herself, he offered to drive her than risk allowing her to drive the distance herself. When they found the distant castle-like roof poking over the woods in the distance, it was down a hill and through a clearing into the presence of the imposing old structure. Rising four stories tall and built of red brick and concrete supports, Melinda shuddered at its imposing presence. Not a single window was intact. Every opening was vacant to the elements and the huge monster of a hospital stood imposing above her as a huge brick monster waiting to swallow her up without emotion. Two long wings stretched out with the presence of long arms out from the entrance. A reputed twenty thousand people had died here because of tuberculosis through the turn of the century. Melinda shuddered in its presence even as her husband pulled her close.

"I thought you said people were haunted, not houses." He asked her.

"It depends on what goes into them." Melinda walked across the faded, weed-choked parking lot. "A lot of people died here. The place is soaked in the memories and energies of a lot of emotions. I have no idea what I'm going to find."

"You're not going in there alone." Jim gave her a kiss and watched her tread lightly in through the front entrance. The location showed the signs of a large teenage party. Beer bottles, aluminum cans and junk food wrappers were everywhere. Fresh graffiti covered the walls. A forgotten used condom was draped over the outside railing of the front stoop, and the inside foyer into the entry hall was strewn with more trash, broken furniture and forgotten party favors. Melinda mugged over the unbridled ability of teenagers to destroy, annihilate and mangle anything that did not belong to them. If but they channeled that energy into their futures rather than becoming disposal human beings…

Melinda stopped eight steps into the old hospital, closed her eyes and lightly swooned. Briefly looking into the old waiting room, Jim noticed her lightly swaying and catching herself. He reached to take her in his arms, but she merely braced herself on him and brushed her long locks from her face.

"Are you okay?"

"There's a bit more energy here than I thought…" Melinda took a deep breath and looked from the deserted and trashed waiting room to the offices hanging open. The room had been invaded the night before and torn astray as the future felons looked for things to steal, things to take or just objects to make into souvenirs. If there had been any old drugs, hypodermics or medicine left behind, they'd probably be stagnant and degraded; yet, those young criminals and vandals still wanted them.

"The power of teenagers, huh…" Jim viewed the destruction of strewn paperwork and beer bottles.

"It feels as if…" Melinda tried to decipher her sensations to her non-psychic husband. "I'm moving underwater… This structure is just charged with human energy. No wonder it's actually haunted…"

"I know." Jim respectfully picked up an over-turned chair and placed it against the wall. "Since I entered, I've felt like we're being watched."

"We are…" Melinda turned on her heel was found herself within a place memory. A flash of light hit her mind and she was briefly back in time in a psychic vision. She was dressed as a nurse, and what was dirty and neglected before was clean, polished and sterile with foggy shades of white, light blue and hospital green. A coughing old man balanced and supported himself on his IV rod as a nurse helped him along. A young doctor hastened along to help a choking patient, and another nurse was fighting to give a patient on a gurney his medicine. Melinda watched her struggling with the sick woman. So many people had died here; way too many people had died here…. Jim reached to her and braced her in the present.

"Mel, please…" He held her in the dingy surroundings once more. "This place is way too much for you. There has to be another…"

"No…" She made a look of determined perseverance. "I can do this…" She shifted her weight and marched out with renewed determination. She stood at the threshold to the second floor littered with trash, debris and scattered pieces of plaster from the walls. "Is someone here?" She called out. "I can help you!"

"Those kids, those kids…" An older man walked from the waiting room in his pajamas and attended by a nurse. "Is that what they call music now? My ears are still ringing."

"Well, it's over now." The nurse responded.

"I liked it." The spirit of a young girl danced between Jim and Melinda.

"Get back up to the third floor!" A ghostly doctor padded the young girl up the stairs. Attending him were a few more ghostly doctors and nurses, but they were far more numbered by the ghosts of their patients who had died here. Of the reputed twenty thousand people who had died here, only a small percent has passed over and the rest were still suffering the pangs of their tuberculosis into the spirit realm. The spirits of the former staff and patients were moving aimlessly around and through Melinda and her husband partially aware of their existence.

"Excuse me, can someone help me…" Melinda tried to get someone's attention.

"Can you see me?" A phantom doctor came up to Melinda. "We need volunteers here. We don't have a lot of bed space for these people and I'm dying for a good cigar!"

"Yes, I can see you…" Melinda beamed harmlessly wanting to help. "But you know, I need some help myself, you see…"

"Dr. Hewitt!" A phantom nurse yelled from the second floor balcony. "Mr. Parker is running around naked again!"

"This time I'm strapping him to his bed and locking his door!" The doctor forgot Melinda and rushed to help amidst the deteriorated surroundings. Melinda looked around the numerous ghosts buzzing and wandering around here. Some of them still seemed sick, others were having a good time in card games and others were just mulling around waiting to be released by the busy staff.

"I think I understand what's going around here." Melinda looked to Jim and realized he had missed everything she had perceived. As far as he was concerned, she was just talking and responding to empty air. "The patients won't go because they think they're still sick, and the staff won't go because they can't get the patients better."

"Interesting…" Jim mused a faint smile. "It's haunted by several thousand hypochondriacs."

"I know you…" One old man in his pajamas seemed to recognize Melinda. "You're Margo's little girl… I'd recognize you anywhere."

"No, I'm sorry…" Melinda couldn't help but beam at his presence. "You know, I can help you cross over…."

"Not Margo's little girl?" He was a short, balding old man with bold brown eyes, but Melinda's heart went out to his adorable nature. "Tommy's little girl? Pauley's?"

"Maybe you can help me?" Melinda escorted the figure into the active and bustling waiting room full of ghosts and apparitions playing games and hanging out together into infinity. "Do you recall a party here the other night?"

"We have a party every night." The old timer sat near eleven older ladies knitting and gossiping. "Glenn Miller, Frankie Avalon and the guy with the pelvis screaming about his Hound Dog… I wonder what else he's recorded."

"He died…" Melinda told him.

"I didn't know he was sick!"

"This party would have had a lot of teenagers in it." Melinda looked to her husband standing and listening to just her. "It would have been loud and… they wouldn't have seen you."

"Oh yeah…." The old timer slowly nodded his head and realized what she was speaking of. "That party… My God. Having sex in the morgue… just what were they thinking! The staff is still talking about it." He paused and looked distrustfully at Melinda. "You're not one of those paranormal researchers, are you?"

"No, I'm just trying to help someone." Melinda noticed one of the old ladies talking to Jim and mistaking him for her deeply departed husband, but he just didn't see her. "Do you possibly recall a young lady who vanished from the party and somehow got upstairs by herself?" Melinda continued.

"Not really."

"You're talking about that mouthy little brat with the big blue eyes, aren't you?" Another spirit looked up from his old 1940s newspaper.

"Maybe…" Melinda turned to a younger patient as Jim watched after her. "Do you know what happened?"

"Can you bring us more reading supplies?"

"Cleaner laundry!" Someone else screamed.

"Better looking nurses!" The ghostly womanizer was swatted by his butch-looking nurse.

"I'll do what I can." Melinda grinned demurely and settled into her dirty chair.

"Max Wainwright…" The ghost tried to shake her hand, but his fingers passed through her palm. "I died here in 1953 at the age of forty… just three days after my birthday." He felt Melinda was a pure soul by the way she shone to him. "My best friend was Jimmy Braddock… he had died the month before, but once I died, we were back together again playing pinochle all over again."

"What happened?"

"Well, over the years, people continued dying or were carried away and we watched the hospital partially shrinking in size." Max continued. "They shut down the top floor, the west wing and then the whole place altogether. People stopped showing up, but we stayed behind waiting our turn to pass on, but young Jimmy, he decided he didn't want to pass over. He had arrived here as a boy before me. He regretted not having a life beyond these walls and decided he wanted to somehow return to life." Max paused as Melinda listened intently. "He tried to assume the bodies of a few characters looking for proof we were haunting the place, but it never worked. He couldn't stick." Max laid his dusty paper side. "When that mouthy girl arrived with all those freeloading, spoiled-rotten, hard-drinking vandals to trash our place, Jimmy singled her out particularly. He couldn't believe that this one girl was so obsessed with her looks and shopping and her so-called status… He was livid. Here he was… wanting to live, and she barely had a life… or a soul he said. He somehow lured her up the back stairs and then…. Next thing I knew he was wandering out as if he was wearing her like a suit." Max paused. "He was so desperate to live again that he didn't care if he was a young lady in high school. I miss him."

"And what happened to her?" Melinda inquired.

"She ain't here." Max leaned in a bit. "But I don't think she likes the company she has."


	5. Chapter 5

Five houses down from Melinda's home was the MacIntyre home. He was a certified public accountant and she was a realtor. He wanted a son, but his wife had given birth to four little girls. He loved his daughters and feared the day they started dating, but he really wanted a son. They all lived on the corner of Eustis Drive and Point Place. Down the street from them at the corner of Eustis and Grace was the Tisdale House. After the disappearance of his wife, rumors were he had killed her and buried her in the basement and then a year later, she had returned to sue for divorce and her claim to the house. Only ten days afterward, they instead worked things out and were celebrating their third wedding anniversary and the birth of their first child. Next door to them, Donna Stiles lived with her daughter, but for the last ten days, mother sensed something had entered her house. She was feeling coldness in the proximity of her daughter, and there was a sensation of being watched. She had called the police twice looking for prowlers in the backyard, and then there was Jackie herself. She had changed… for the better! The other night, Donna came home and Jackie had cleaned the house and done the laundry! In a bout of boredom, the girl had actually straightened up the garage and in the weirdest thing yet, fixed and repaired the old dishwasher, saying it now worked good enough to sell!

"Who are you?" She looked at the girl a bit scared.

"Mom…" Jackie shined and beamed. "What kind of question is that?"

"A very good one…." Mother looked her daughter over carefully and noticed mannerisms and gestured she'd never noticed. She was drinking tea, she was actually wearing blue jeans pulled up to her waist without the strap of a thong sticking out and she was wearing less make-up than usual… almost none. She was living with a stranger!

"Jackie, honey…" Donna shook her head worriedly and afraid. "You've changed so much in the last few days. Has something happened to you?"

Jackie just scoffed and rolled her eyes. She sipped her tea, picked up her book and rose to her feet, prancing up the stairs to her home and vanishing into the room. The door closed behind her. The décor of the bedroom had been altered. Gone were the boy band posters and the extraneous photos. Her music collection had been reorganized. The floor was actually clean and uncluttered. A sip from her tea and she paused before her mirror, a second to brush her hair back from her face with her left hand and an entrancing glance into her own mind. Her lungs filled with air as if expecting a harsh pain and exhaled once again. Setting her glass and book aside, she pulled her hair back into a ponytail, she examined the curvature and nuances of the shape of her face, the flow and length of her hair along her scalp and then her eyes bobbed down to her bosom and back up once again. One of her eyes was brown; the other eye was her natural blue. Slowly closing her eyes, she looked at herself in the mirror at they were both blue again. She was a good-looking girl. Her hands unfurled her hair as her head turned toward her vanity table. The brush jumped up into the air to be caught by her hand at the same time her mother came to confront her.

"Oh my god!" Donna Stiles froze at the sight of her daughter's power. Jackie turned her head to her mother barging into her room. What was going on here?! She was taken aback from fear from that trick. Was it a trick? She certainly hoped so, but she would have to wait for the next morning and the next new day. In the pre-lunch hours of the follwing day, Donna had made her very best sandwich combos for Delia and Melinda in the antique store and had delivered them with a purpose. She was a scared mother looking for solace or answers with solace. Delia could see it in her face.

""Hi Donna…" Delia looked back again. "Donna…" Her voice was sympathetic. "You look worried. Is there a problem with the restaurant?"

"No, not in the least…" The raven-haired mother gasped just above a whisper. "Delia, you know a lot of people. You don't by any chance know a psychic, do you?"

Delia and Melinda shared a secret furtive glance.

"Maybe…" Delia hedged nervously. "Is there a problem?"

"I'm not sure…" Donna hedged a bit herself refusing to confess the truth. Her blue eyes searching for answers and trying to find a solution, she took a deep breath and gasped emotionally wrought. "I think something has moved into my house. Someone I love has changed."

"Jackie..." Melinda spoke up slightly submissive and hesitantly.

"You noticed?!" Donna stepped away and back, baring her soul. "She's changed so much. She's… I know she's my daughter, but… I'm not sure anymore. At first, I thought she had got her act together, but now…" She stopped and looked to Melinda then back to Delia. "The temperature in that house, the feelings I've had… what I'm seeing…" She looked back to Melinda. She seemed to understand more what she was saying. "She's got… powers."

"What kind of powers?" Melinda asked determinedly.

"Things move for her." Donna confessed nervously as Delia slowly unwrapped the lunch order. "I saw her grab a brush from out of the air that flew to her!"

Delia lightly dropped her jaw after hearing that.

"Donna…" Melinda's voice came slow and assuringly as she took the frazzled mother's hands. "I have this… gift… sort of a second sight." She danced around the boundaries of her own powers. "I sometimes see things no one else does. Would you like me to talk to her and see what is going on?"

"Melinda, would you?"

"Will she be home tonight?"

"She'll be home." Donna stated it as fact. "For some reason… she doesn't seem to go out anymore."

"I'll be there." Melinda promised. She had another promise to make too. It was dinner with her husband at the Sidewalk Café in town. After telling Jim what was happening, she dropped him off for duty at the fire station and drove half the way home. Turning down Eustis, she was at the split-level Dutch Colonial that the Stiles called home. Eric Stiles was a structural engineer often away doing work for other companies. Donna really wanted him home now to help her deal with the things happening in her house. When Melinda rapped at the front door, she vaulted on it as if it was a lifeline.

"Melinda, you're here!" She welcomed her in.

"How are you doing?" Melinda earnestly cared about her welfare. Shedding her coat and draping it over the chair, she looked around the home. It was clean and homey. The fireplace was closed off and redesigned to support the TV and a display of books. The couture was based on a design for a combination of a happy home life tempered with a well-to do family. The furnishings were Retro-modern from the glass top coffee table to the oak hallway table. She even recognized a few antiques purchased from her store.

"Believe it or not…" Donna talked a bit more confident that she did in the store. "This is the cleanest my house had been in weeks!" She reached for a bottle of water in the living room bar. "This is all Jackie!" She waved her hand across the room then took out another bottle to add to Melinda, but she politely refused it.

"Where's Jackie?"

"We had a brief fight." Donna confessed. "I actually wanted her to go out, but get this… she actually said that there was nothing to do in this town. This from the girl I couldn't get to stay away from the mall!"

"Can I talk to her?" Melinda asked in her careful caring voice.

"Be my guest." Donna gestured to the stairs. Melinda watched Donna taking a sedative for her nerves and tried to ignore that memory. Whatever Jackie was doing was obviously affecting her. Melinda turned with a slow approach and took the staircase lightly. The first door on the right was the bathroom and the next door on the left was Eric's office, now empty and waiting his return home. The next door on the end was the master bedroom while the room at the far end with the warning sign on the door looked as if it belonged to a girl. Melinda took a deep breath as she knocked first. There was an annoyed groan within and an exasperated sigh. Her fingers turning the doorknob, Melinda pressed forward unsure what she was going to see. Lying across the bed wearing blue jeans and a dark brown t-shirt, Jackie Stiles looked up briefly and grimaced a bit confused to this visitor.

"Mrs. Gordon, " She turned her book over to her bed stand. "What are you doing here?"

"Mrs. Gordon?" Melinda forced a brief smile. "You know, I've been in your mother's sandwich shop so many times you actually started calling me Melinda. I can't believe you forgot meeting me at all when I talked to you at school."

"Oh yeah…" Jackie swayed her legs over to the edge of the bed as she sat up. "Well, I guess I'm forgetting a lot of things. My life just keeps getting a bit more confused."

"Did it get confused at the party you and your friends had at the old hospital?" Melinda fished a bit trying to get a response. Jackie lightly gasped and looked away for the moment ignoring her thoughts and trying to think of a response.

"Jackie…" Melinda stood over her trying to appeal to her. "I can see spirits, and I found and saw Max at the hospital and talked to him. He misses his young friend, Jimmy, and I think I know where he is."

"Mrs. Gordon..."

"Melinda…"

"Melinda…" Jackie started again. "I… don't believe in ghosts. I have no idea who you are talking about." She stood face to face to the lovely psychic.

"Jimmy…" Melinda looked into Jackie's eyes. They were brown instead of blue. "This isn't natural. You should be crossing over, not taking over this girl's life."

"What?" Jackie started mugging and grinning into a short chuckle. "You think I'm…." She began turning away to her music collection. "I can't believe this." She turned over a Jesse McCartney CD and held up a Christina Aguilera. "Melinda, it's me, Jackie. I'm not this… I can't believe you accuse me of something so preposterous."

"When did we first meet?" Melinda asked the girl.

"At my mom's restaurant."

"Your birthday?"

"January Ninth, 1981…"

"Your father's name?"

"Eric Anthony Stiles…" Jackie answered back. "He was born in Ashland, New York."

"What did Delia and I give you for your sweet sixteen?"

"A crystal waterfall…" Jackie faced her off. "You said it cast different colors."

"Delia and I didn't know each other then." Melinda had tricked her. "Her name was Andrea…" Melinda caught her. "She died a year ago."

Jackie's eyes were completely black now. Her left hand lifted Melinda off her feet and tossed her across the room and into the window. Melinda felt the glass shattering… the windowpane cracking and then brief freefall before she hit the ground.


	6. Chapter 6

Melinda woke up in fear and shock. She was strapped down to a stretcher in traction and staring up at the top of the ambulance just as the doors opened whisking her into emergency. She forced out a few painful sobbing sounds of intense pain. She tried turning her head looking for her husband, but all she noticed were EMT's and nurses rushing her past another hospital staff and lime green walls. She couldn't move her head. The metal contraption it was in prevented her from turning it. All she could do was turn her eyes left and right trying to find a familiar face. Who were these people? Where was she? She recalled getting tossed out the window and hitting the ground. She sobbed once more and closed her eyes filling with tears as a hand lovingly stroked her face and neck. She opened her vision to her husband holding her.

"They're giving you clovodol. It's for the pain." Jim looked down over her. "Melinda, you landed on your left shoulder which kept you from breaking your back, but your left ulna and radius are broken and your shoulder is out of its socket." He ran alongside her gurney trying to keep up.

"I can't feel my body." She spoke through clenched teeth with obvious terror in her voice. "I'm paralyzed!!" She was hysterical.

"Can you feel that?" Jim stroked her right leg.

"Yes…"

"You're not paralyzed." Jim tearfully stayed by her in the elevator as they headed toward x-ray. "It's just your spine recoiling and resettling after the fall. You landed and tumbled off bushes that kept you from hitting the ground any harder. You just have to stay immobile to keep from going into shock."

"Sorry, Jim, no further." A lab tech stopped Jim from entering the x-ray room.

"I'll be here!" Jim called to his wife once more. "I love you!" He choked a bit on his concern and turned round once wondering what to do next. Over at Driscoll County Medical, a block and a half from Grandview Community Hospital, Jackie Stiles was wrestling and fighting with police officers and trained orderlies as they forced her into a strait jacket and kept her from breaking loose again. After tossing Melinda, she had covered five blocks and sprinting jumps across half of the roofs of Grandview businesses before getting tackled in the park and wrestled into handcuffs. A few of her classmates had saw her run from the law and even her attempted escape across the rooftops and had even snapped a few pictures on their portable phones. She might have been a strong teenager, but seven officers, three orderlys and a powerful suppressant would keep her knocked out until they figured out on how or what to charge her. Even if Melinda chose not to press charges, Donna Stiles knew her daughter needed psychiatric help.

"Donna…" Delia appeared with her son in tow to lend her support. "What the heck happened?!"

"She went crazy as if she was on drugs." Donna turned round stressing out. "She pushed Melinda out the window then bolted from the house. Next thing I know, the police pursue her into an alley and up onto the rooftops over the square. Where did she learn how to do that? She gets dizzy on the second rung of a ladder."

"Wow…" Ned mumbled.

"Well, I…" Delia looked her son over. "I'm not sure what's going on myself, but Melinda seems to have a grasp on it. You know, she tends to work a lot with high school kids these days." She thought back to Melinda's support with the young community in matters both paranormal and normal.

"Where's Jackie now?" Ned asked.

"They have her tranquilized and strapped down to a bed." Donna paced before the coffee machines of the waiting room. "What are you kids experimenting with these days?" She confronted Ned. "What did you do to her?"

"Donna…" Delia moved to defend her son. "My son is much smarter than that! He does not experiment with dangerous substances!"

"Yeah!" Ned spoke up. "Cocaine's just as dangerous as arsenic in my book. I don't do that stuff."

"Then what's wrong with her?" Donna asked out loud unaware the answer was more incredible than she believed. Five rooms away from her, across the hall from a clinical depressive and next door to a woman treated for chemical burns, young Jackie Stiles was in a room by herself. A nurse checked her pulse, looked at the pupilary response of the young girl's blue eyes than straightened and adjusted her blankets for the most comfortable stay. There were enough sedatives in her to keep her drugged until the blood work revealed what was in her body, if any. Nothing the doctors and physicians could do would explain what was actually happening. Once the sound of the nurse departing the room was obvious, Jackie woke from her deep sleep, her eyes opening to the brown eyes of another person. Her body stirred, she started sitting up and then she realized her arms and legs were strapped to the bottom of the bed.

"Jim!" Delia turned round and noticed Melinda's husband coming toward her. "How's Melinda? Will she be okay?"

"She's…" Jim choked back on his concerns and fears as he chose the right words. The more his wife dabbled in ghosts the closer she was getting close to harm. "She's going to be… okay. I've been through several routines with people who fell from upstairs windows with little or no damage. It's just tough going through it myself." He paused pretending to look away. "Uh… how about Jackie?"

"It took eight officers to take her down." Donna paced back and forth trying to think. "Everyone's been asking if she's been using drugs. I mean, what kind of drugs makes a girl turn superhuman?"

"Donna…" Delia started thinking about what if it had been Ned in the 's place. She looked at him standing by her then back to the concerned mom. "No matter what has happened… that is your daughter. Nothing can change that."

"Have they said anything about you seeing her yet?" Jim spoke up. "Where do they have her? Is it a recovery room or an isolation room?"

"Uh, I don't…" The distracted mother tried to think, but Jim held his hand up to stop her. Turning on his heel, he spun round and caught a nurse at her station, spoke to her inaudibly for Delia, Ned or Donna to hear and exchanged in a few questions. The conversation was brief, only about a minute, and Jim turned back with renewed faith. He forced a quick grin for the nurse's help and turned back to Donna Stiles.

"She's in semi-isolation." He repeated what he had been told. "That means you can see her if accompanied by a member of staff, and since they know me here, they'll let me escort you."

"What about us?" Delia asked.

"Sorry, Delia, family only."

"But thank you so much for your support." Donna hugged Delia and even Ned before turning back to Jim. "And Jim… I'm so sorry about Melinda."

"I'm sure she's going to be okay." Jim led the way down the hall. "I just want to rush back to her side."

"I won't be long." Donna walked the length of five rooms past depressives and mentally handicapped patients to the one room with a closed door. A glance to the nurses' station and the nurse on duty electronically buzzed the door to open. The lock clicked and unlocked and Jim reached for the doorknob, pulling it open for the concerned mother. The room was dark as their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. The anxious fingers of Donna Stiles reached through the sheets and blanket to embrace her sleeping daughter and clutched empty space. A wave of confusion came over her as Jim flicked on the lamp. The bed was empty; the straps pulled broken and loose from the bed frame and lying on the floor. His eyes looked to the bars on the window then up to the round garret window twelve feet off the floor. It was hanging open… a wayward breeze blowing into the room…


	7. Chapter 7

In the Clancy household, Jim Clancy filled the dishwasher and hesitated from starting it. He still had to get the lunch dishes from Melinda upstairs. She had a broken left arm, a slipped disc that gave her an interesting little wiggle walk and had to wear a neck brace for a while. During this time, the local news was asking for whereabouts on the missing Stiles girl, sending speculation through the community the girl was either wandering around with amnesia or possibly abducted. Melinda knew the truth. She had been busy using her laptop to search local census and state county records for a trace of Jimmy Braddock or at least who he had been in life. Local records and a phone call to the town records had nothing. Weatherly Hills had accepted patients from the tri-state region; finding an area Jimmy knew and was familiar was going to be difficult, maybe impossible. She then found a page on Weatherly Hills and an impartial list of the patients from there. Max Wainwright was on the list as a former certified public accountant from Grandview. There was mention of a Samuel Gordon from Stockbridge and a Margaret Clancy from Harridge. Wanting to do genealogical checks for relations to those names, Melinda plied on. She fussed aggravatedly with her neck brace and then noticed a scanned and dated black and white tintype of patients. In the antedated photo was a line of beds holding young men between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. She scanned the names… Harold Shapiro, Walter Franklin, Peter Mackenzie, James Braddock…

"Found you…" She whispered under breath. Jimmy Braddock from Arbutus had been entered into the hospital in 1946 at the age of fifteen and died in 1953 of tuberculosis. The young man in the photo looked tired, weak and sympathetic with barely any will to live. Melinda noted the uncut mop of dark hair on him in the picture. She grieved for his past state a second and looked away briefly.

"Brown eyes…" She whispered. Her heart went out to him, but she also had feelings for the girl whose life he had assumed. Her mind next turned to a search in the neighboring county's records and she found lineage and census records of Braddocks up to the 1980s. She found mention of a Braddock family farm with five kids who nearly all died of the disease except for two. One of the unlucky was James Nathaniel Braddock. Melinda hit the print icon with her mouse and struggled up out of bed. She grabbed her blue jeans and sweater and started changing. She'd have to sneak past Jim watching the downstairs.

"Melinda, no!" Jim confronted his wife at the front door. "You are not going after Jackie. The police will find her."

"The police can't save her. They can only exacerbate the circumstances." The attractive brunette leaned on her cane. "Jim, I know where to find her now."

"Well," Jim held his wife off. "Then…. You're not going alone. I'll go with you."

"Fine." Melinda stared at him. "Go get my jacket for me. I left it upstairs."

Jim focused his eyes on his wife as he turned for the staircase. He took the first few steps, turned his head round to his other shoulder to look back at her, and remembered how much he truly loved her. He hastened his steps up the staircase to their bedroom and glanced over the disturbed bed, looked for his wife's jacket and noticed it draped over the chair by the bed. His fingers touched it and he heard the front door down stairs swinging shut.

"Melinda!" He whirled round with the jacket clenched in his grip. Scrambling down the stairway, he heard the truck in the driveway starting up and pulling out on to the street. Just as Jim made it out the front door and stoop, he saw Melinda driving off without him down the street. He was angry, he was frustrated, and he was just a bit impressed by her determination to help this girl on her own. He exhaled aggravatedly and secretly bemused her ability to distract him. He still couldn't let her get away with making him feel foolish. He reached for his handheld phone on his belt and started to speed-dial the shop for Delia to come get him. Upon that minute and before he could get that far, a familiar gold Lexus pulled up in front of the house, and Dr. Payne stepped out from the driver's seat. He had a basket of fruit for his favorite ailing psychic.

"How's Melinda?" He started opening his backseat for the fruit.

"She took off for the girl." Jim reclosed the backdoor of the car. "We have to go stop her before she gets herself killed."

"Jim…" Dr. Payne waxed a befuddled state as Jim got into the passenger seat. He slipped back into the driver's seat. "I can assure you that Melinda should be safe. I doubt this girl could…."

"She threw my wife through a window!" Jim glared to the professor starting up the car.

"Okay, okay…." Payne mused on his life again. "Once again, I find myself wondering what's going on."

Already beyond the town square, down Main Street and turning on to the highway, Melinda found herself heading south out of town. Her fingers reached up aggravatedly pulling off her neck brace. Her neck fell better now than it did, it was the only thing hurting her. Folded up in her back jeans pocket, she pulled out her computer printout. She had never heard of Arbutus before, but according to the on-line maps of the region, it was about an hour and a half drive away. It was a former mining town, now nearly a ghost town, down from a population of three thousand to a mere seven hundred, dotted with deserted farms and derelict coal factories. Its economy had not survived the tuberculosis epidemic of the early Twentieth century or the new highway in the Fifties. It was becoming more of a retirement community for folks leaving the bigger cities and a home for officers from nearby Fort Jefferson. Melinda was more interested in locating the forgotten Braddock homestead. Assuming it still existed and no one lived there, it would be the one place that Jackie might head for, a location from her past life as Jimmy Braddock. The computer printout gave unerring directions down the deserted back streets of Arbutus along wooded neighborhoods and numerous deserted shacks that once existed for homes to the living. Melinda counted the numbers until she found the correct place… A lone brick and wood cottage concealed behind old immense oak trees and a yard of weeds. She pulled into the old driveway and forgot her injuries and pains to investigate the house. Her feet followed the sunken walkway to the deserted front porch. Looking at the front door slightly ajar she knew she was in the right place. Ambling awkwardly on her injured back, she stepped up on to the porch bracing herself on the loose railing and pushed the front door lightly out of her way and found a home created from the ruins. Her eyes scanned over a recent take-out chicken bucket resting in the old dining room and a container of aluminum cans for recycling. Melinda focused her vision over to the furniture, which had been uncovered; their white sheets respectfully folded and stacked on a window seat. She had followed the path of the young lady to the home of her past life.

"Jimmy…" She called out to the house. She heard a rustling to her left then movement from over head. Her head cocked up to the top of the staircase up the middle of the house. A delicate hand took the railing, two feet appeared through the descending railing and then the young lady revealed herself, clad in a young man's white shirt, long brown pants and suspenders and heavy boots.

"What are you doing here?" Jackie looked down the stairs to Melinda. "You've got a lot of guts following me here. This is my house!"

"I want to talk to you, Jimmy." Melinda spoke up. She was not going to be addressed with that tone of voice.

"Don't call me that."

"Oh…" Melinda became annoyingly defensive. "Well, do you prefer James? I'm not calling you Jackie, because we both know you're not her. What do you want?"

"No, what do **you** want?"

"I want to help Jackie, and you if you'd just let me." Melinda's voice turned sympathetic. She stepped back this time as the young lady descended to her. "Jimmy, I truly understand what you're going through, but this is just not the way to do it. You were trapped in a hospital because of an illness you didn't want, but Jackie deserves to have a life too. Taking hers away is not the way to do things."

Jackie didn't respond. She was acting more distracted than annoyed. She poked for more chicken in the bucket then dug into her pockets for money left over from collecting and turning in the aluminum cans on the property.

"Jimmy…" Melinda motioned to her through the house. "You were upset that you never got to live, but you're taking Jackie's away from her."

"She didn't have one." Jackie looked to her. "Her heart barely went beyond the confines of herself. She was a spoiled rotten... brat who lived only by making others miserable. I can fix that. We can be someone. I can help her. I can make her a better person than she was. I can give her a heart... the one she didn't have."

Melinda had coiffed her head up realizing something.

"You fell in love with her, didn't you." She lightly tilted her head. "You didn't randomly pick her out, you fell in love with her. Jimmy…. She deserves the right to fix her own life. She can turn her own life around on her own. The way you're doing it isn't natural!"

Jackie tried to ignore her by picking meat off a drumstick and gnawing off the leftover meat from the bone.

"Do you want to know what it was like there?" Jackie looked up recalling another life. "Being so weak you couldn't leave your bed, nurses and doctors having to lift and carry you around. Being so scared to fall asleep that you might never wake up. Watching from afar as my friends and relatives got to have lives, get jobs and move away… They left me alone." The emotions started reaching her. "They stopped coming." Jackie sniffed and wept from Jimmy's memories. "I wasn't allowed to attend my own mother's funeral!" Her voice choked and her eyes filled with tears. "And then to meet this girl who had everything I missed and not appreciate any of it? It wasn't fair!"

Melinda heard other sounds from outside. Her head turned to look out the dirty windows and she heard her husband's voice. He had spotted their truck from the street and was racing toward the front door. Professor Payne was with right behind him.

"Melinda…" Jim called ahead for her. He put one foot on the front porch and the door slammed shut against him. Next to Jackie and behind Melinda, a large chair had bolted out of the room and blocked the door. Melinda had jumped back a bit at that exhibition of poltergeist activity. Jim looked through the windows at his wife facing off with the young girl.

"Jimmy, stop this." Melinda faced off with Jackie. "Please, can't we work something out?"

"I didn't do that." Jackie confessed. Outside, Jim Clancy pounded at the door trying to push it open. Payne tried shattered the window with a rock, but the glass wouldn't crack.

"Jimmy…" Another voice came from the kitchen. Melinda looked toward the kitchen and saw a beautiful mature woman in a green dress and flowered apron. She was slightly taller than Melinda with long flowing dark hair but with the posture and build of an older woman who had raised several children. "Listen to Mrs. Gordon here."

"Mom?" Jackie saw her apparition too.

"Sweetheart…" The ghost of Connie Braddock strolled forward to her son in the body of this girl. "You never left my mind up until the day I died. It broke my heart to never be able to hold you and bring you home." Her fingers reached through the young girl. "I couldn't pass over without you. Don't you see that?"

"Jimmy, listen to your mother here." Melinda spoke up. She turned round to her husband fighting with the door to get him to stop pounding. "She loves you. She knows as well as I how bad you're life was, but she can make it better. You've already touched Jackie's life this much, but are you going to turn against your mother as well?"

"Jimmy, please…" Connie peered into Jackie's brown eyes. "Prove to me that's you in there."

"I love you, mom." Jackie choked on her emotions and the chair popped out of the way out of Jim's way. Melinda had looked away for a second and Connie's spirit had vanished. Instead of reaching to her rushing husband, she grabbed on to Jackie falling back to her as well. Jim and Payne stood wondering what had happened beyond their eyes, and instead looked upon Melinda sitting on the floor cradling Jackie Stiles against her shoulder. The young girl opened her blue eyes, took a deep breath and looked around wondering where she was. She seemingly noticed Melinda beaming upon her for the first time.

"Melinda…" She gasped for air again. "Where are we?"

"Welcome back, honey…" Melinda caressed the young girl's shoulder as if she were her own daughter.


	8. Chapter 8

8

"Thank you again, and have a nice day." Back in her shop, Melinda had sold the antique lamp she had just acquired the week before, and for just a bit more than she had acquired it. She rang up the purchase, placed the money in the drawer and looked up to Delia looking at her. She grinned a bit, opened her mouth to say something then hesitated before continuing with her thought.

"Are you sure you want to be here?" Delia stated the obvious. "I mean, you were tossed out a window the other day. I can take care of things if you want to go home and relax that arm." She held up the cast on Melinda's arm for example.

"I'm much happier here." Melinda shined. "We Gordons are made from study stuff. Besides, I don't think I could stay home and watch nothing but an old _Party of Five_ marathon on Cable."

"But still…" Delia turned round to clean and dust the display when the bell on the door jingled and Jackie Stiles came in dressed in her form-fitting pink sweater and tight Capri pants against the cold temperature outside. She was definitely all-girl once more from the rosy makeup on her face to the Jesse McCartney music playing on her I-pod. Running a delivery for her mother, her personality had returned to exuberant and out-going instead of withdrawn and studious.

"Sandwiches from my mom, on the house." She glided into the antique store as if she were on strings. "Thanks from her for bringing her little back to her. God, she's driving me nuts again."

"How you feeling, honey?" Melinda noticed the free lunch. It was her regular vegetable delight sandwich and Delia's favorite seafood combo.

"I'm feeling….good." Jackie started hedging backward eager to get to the mall. "I mean, " She stepped forward again. "The last week seems like a bad dream, and yet, I remember all of it. Was I… I mean, do you think I'm throwing my life away by shopping and partying?"

"Well," Melinda looked to Delia and back to the young lady. "You're just enjoying the last vestiges of your freedom, but I think you ought to start looking forward to what you want to be after you graduate. Maturity does have its virtues." She took Jackie's hand. "Do you recall what happened to you?"

"Melinda," Jackie rolled her eyes covertly to Delia and back to Melinda. "You don't share your body with someone and not forget it." She paused thinking about it. "Jimmy really had a bad life, didn't he?"

"Yes, he did."

"Do you think he's happy now?"

"He crossed over." Melinda shined. "Of course, he's happy. He's in a better place now."

"In a little way, I kind of miss him." Jackie acquiesced for a second. "He actually made me feel like a better person."

"You know, it's not that hard." Delia added her two cents.

"I know, but…." Jackie's thought was interrupted by Tricia and Sheera in their open convertible honking the horn in front of her mother's shop next door. It was time for the mall. "Got to go!" The flighty teenager spun on her heel and raced out to jump into the convertible with her friends. Melinda mused with a smile and lightly shook her head debating whether she had really changed for the better.

"Would you want to live your teenage years over again?" Delia asked out loud.

"Heck, no!" Melinda didn't want to consider it.

"I wouldn't mind having her figure though…." Delia mumbled under breath.

END


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